The Trump administration is drafting a federal rule that would let some married couples receive child-care subsidy money even if one parent stays home with the children. The idea is being advanced as a priority of Vice President JD Vance and would use an existing pot of money originally set up to help working parents pay for outside care.
That pot is the Child Care and Development Fund, a roughly $12 billion Health and Human Services program created in the 1990s. It now helps about 870,000 families cover care for roughly 1.3 million children up to age 13.
Typical aid is about $9,000 per child per year. To qualify today, a family generally must have income below 85 percent of the state’s median (some states set a lower bar) and the parent or parents must be working, in school, or in job training. About 80 percent of current recipient families are headed by a single working parent, most of them mothers. States usually send the money as vouchers or direct payments to child-care providers.
According to a report from the New York Times, the new draft rule would add a new category called “parent-based childcare.” A married couple meeting the income test could receive the subsidy if one spouse works at least 35 hours a week and the other stays home to care for their own child. The money is described as offsetting the stay-at-home parent’s lost wages.
Unmarried couples and single parents who are not working would not qualify. Officials say the change can be made by regulation without a new law from Congress. After White House approval and a public-comment period, it could take effect as early as next year.
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🚨 BREAKING: The Trump administration is reportedly drafting a plan pushed by JD Vance to give federal child care funds to married couples with a STAY-AT-HOME SPOUSE while the other parent works — NYT
The program could be $9K per year for these families
The goal: make it easier… pic.twitter.com/Wi5eEO8Urv
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 5, 2026
Vance has argued for years that young children do better at home. “Young children are clearly happier and healthier when they spend the day at home with a parent,” he wrote in a 2021 essay with the Wall Street Journal.
The same year he said “normal Americans” want a “family policy that doesn’t shunt their kids into crap daycare so they can enjoy more ‘freedom’ in the paid labor force.” The draft also tracks language in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation policy book, which called for directing funds to parents “either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Roger Severino commented on the details of the plan. “You don’t need statutes to do it, and with existing programs we can end discrimination against stay-at-home parents,” he said.
No formal details have been released by the White House as of this report.
